Jasnah's Endgame: The Philosopher Tyrant

[MistbornMathematician]

After finishing Rhythm of War, I was quite suspicious of Jasnah. Her professed goals and ideals, as well as her explicitly stated personal morality, simply did not line up with her actions. Recently, I decided to look around at what other people were saying about her and her apparent hypocrisy, and it turned out I was far from the first person to notice. Her treatment of servants, Shallan, and anyone she sees as "lesser" clashes with her rhetoric and political positions, and her aggressive and insulting behavior when questioned on her ideas (most notably with the "kill the Heralds" and the "Singer extermination" proposals) goes completely against her scholarly ideology. Particularly egregiously, despite her frequent affirmations that she's loyal to her family, she would have killed Renarin over her suspicions about his spren. Some people take this to mean she is nothing but a tyrannical hypocrite who loves exerting her power to abuse and control those under her. and others that she's a flawed but noble individual who can't live up to her own impossibly high ideals, but in my opinion both significantly miss the point. 

I have been in academia for a little more than a decade, and as a mathematician who spends the majority of his time with other mathematicians (and adjacent fields, like theoretical physics or computer science), I have to say that Jasnah is perhaps the single most realistic portrayal of the brilliant-STEM-political-philosopher-type that I have seen in fiction. It's a bit of a dirty not-so-secret that almost any mathematician who makes any serious study of philosophy (political or otherwise) invariably comes up with some radical ideology, which is usually quite unique and never fits on any normal political spectrum -- but you usually won't hear us discussing ours, much less writing them out, as they tend to be quite personal and also, for lack of a better term, terrifying. The issue with us as philosophers is that we tend to work off of axiomatic systems, which lend themselves extremely well to harsh, even brutal ideologies, full of extremely well-justified immoralities-- the thing which makes them terrifying isn't the consequences of the ideology, but the reasons for those consequences. If you agree with the initial axioms, you're forced to agree with the conclusions, and that's why works like Industrial Society and Its Future are so disquieting. The axioms used generally appear reasonable, yet the derived conclusions are, at times, horrific. The intent with these kinds of philosophies is practically always good and agreeable, but the methods of achieving the chosen goals almost invariably lead to some kind of reprehensible result. And yet, despite this, we all dream of our personal ideologies being somehow put into action, and on the rare occasions when we do discuss our philosophies, the phrases "if I had my way" or "if I ruled the world" are quite common. One might draw parallels to Taravangian not being able to make policies when he was too brilliant as in-universe justification for why Plato's ideal of the "philosopher king" might not be so ideal after all.

So where does Jasnah fall into this, assuming she's similar to her real-life counterparts? Well, she's a brilliant academic with a somewhat radical professed ideology (and, if the people in the real world are anything to go by, an even more radical actual ideology) who obtains significant power. For all intents and purposes, she does rule the world, kept in check only by Navani and Dalinar (and not even by them, really). She secretly has access to emotional Allomancy to eliminate rivals and manipulate allies, and she has already begun dismantling many elements of Alethi society. Sure, her stated ideology is probably close to her real ideology, and sure, she can get enraged and irrational at times, but at the end of the day, much of what she's doing is a means to an end: attempting to form her ideal society. It's very possible that she does indeed want to remove the borders between the lighteyes and darkeyes and scrap the Nahn and Dahn system, despite her personal enjoyment of rank, but it's almost certain that she's doing it (at least in part) to reduce the lighteyes' power and by doing so consolidate power herself. Her ideal society probably doesn't include slaves, but when she frees every Alethi slave, she will completely break the already-crippled economic power of the highprinces, forcing them to be reliant on her and the Radiants basically indefinitely. (We've seen that exact thing repeatedly occur in history, in fact, with the most notable examples following the English blockade of the transatlantic slave trade and the Third Servile War [the one with Spartacus].) And the fears the other monarchs have about being consumed by the Alethi are likely as well-founded as they appear, particularly with their ever-more-certain reliance on the Radiants. 

In short, it seems extremely likely that Jasnah is gathering power, weakening the establishment, and setting herself up to have near-absolute control of Alethkar (and Roshar as a whole if she can), all so she can have the ability to implement her ideology. She isn't a traitor who'll dramatically turn to Odium, she isn't a heartless monster without affection for her friends or family, and she probably isn't going to go full genocidal maniac (at least on humans) -- but she is going to do her best to shape the world as she sees fit. Whether she's a visionary or a villain depends entirely on whether or not you agree with her axioms, which for now we can only guess at, and if she does get a Shard...well, expect her to put the Catacendre to shame. Even remaking humanity from the ground up wouldn't be beyond her power then, and who knows what kind of "balance patch" she would apply. 

[+Oltux72]

Well, that seems to depend on whether she will succeed or fail. Freeing the slaves has cost a lot of the middle class a lot of money for example. She might be Roshar's equivalent of Joseph II of Austria in the future.

Secondly her power among the Knights Radiant should soon be waning, as their number is ggrowing.

[MistbornMathematician]

19 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

She might be Roshar's equivalent of Joseph II of Austria in the future.

Definitely possible -- it would be quite the tragic ending if her legacy was essentially nothing, with none of her policies and reforms lasting even a year beyond her death.

19 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Secondly her power among the Knights Radiant should soon be waning, as their number is ggrowing.

I would suggest the opposite, as with a larger base of Radiant support and more codified power structures in the Radiant orders, her authority would become more solidified in the chain of command most orders seem to have. However, given how touchy many Radiants are, it would definitely seem that until she gets more personal loyalty of the sort Dalinar and Kaladin inspire so well, she'll be unable to do anything too drastic just yet without risking some kind of major unrest. For example, if she tried to do what Taravangian wanted that one time and ban unintelligent people from having kids, it seems very likely that most orders would vehemently oppose her. 

[cometaryorbit]

I think you are largely right in the big picture of her psychology and approach, but I disagree she intends to consolidate power herself - I think her comments to Dalinar about intending to be the last real Alethi monarch, and her respect for the Azish and Thaylen systems,  are honest. I think she wants something like a 19th century British constitutional monarchy system, with a strong parliament/council/something more powerful than the actual monarch.

I do think that consolidation of power is likely to be the real outcome, though, at least in the near- to medium-term.

The basis of power of traditional feudal nobility system of the hereditary high lighteyes is IMO already essentially completely broken by the loss of Alethkar's land + the rise of Radiants in warfare above dead-Shardbearers as the ultimate force + transition to a hyper-urban life in Urithiru. I don't think abolishing slavery will make it much more so (as I think it's already completely doomed regardless); but I think consolidation of power in the Kholins is the natural result of the Queen of Alethkar and two Bondsmiths, and thus leadership of the Radiants and control of Urithiru, all being close family.

The question is what will happen in the next generation...

[MistbornMathematician]

On 7/5/2023 at 1:43 PM, cometaryorbit said:

I think you are largely right in the big picture of her psychology and approach, but I disagree she intends to consolidate power herself - I think her comments to Dalinar about intending to be the last real Alethi monarch, and her respect for the Azish and Thaylen systems,  are honest. I think she wants something like a 19th century British constitutional monarchy system, with a strong parliament/council/something more powerful than the actual monarch.

Agreed -- she's probably going for some sort of constitutional monarchy. Some spin on a technocracy, if I had to guess. 

On 7/5/2023 at 1:43 PM, cometaryorbit said:

 I don't think abolishing slavery will make it much more so (as I think it's already completely doomed regardless)

I think the impact on the economies of the highprinces will actually be quite drastic. Not only are slaves shown to be pretty expensive, so freeing them would essentially destroy a good portion of their wealth (hard to say exactly what percentage, but historically it seems likely that it'd be upwards of a fifth), but also slaves are paid half as much as normal workers, so assuming that the work the slaves were doing still has to be done (and they just go back to doing it, which is an extremely generous assumption), that's also doubling their cost over time. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it led to the highprinces not being able to afford to keep their armies, and thus a truly unified Alethi army.